Sometimes, to get the desired effect from a story, you have to end it before it is over. An example is the tearjerker tale of Isaiah McCoy:

McCoy walked out of a Delaware prison a free man in January 2017, five years after being convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

A judge found him not guilty at a retrial, and McCoy soon began enjoying the limelight that came with his exoneration. He reveled in speaking engagements before lawyers associations and anti-death penalty groups.

“People were loving my story,” McCoy said.

No doubt. McCoy is a person of politically preferred pigmentation.

Private investigator Philip Primason worked on the defense team that got him acquitted.

“He wanted to become a public speaker and advocate, educating the public about the incarceration crisis, the enormous public risks of the death penalty and to advocate for innocence,” Primason wrote. “I was very pleased to see this become a reality.”

Liberals are advised to stop reading here.

Now, as the great Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story.

McCoy currently resides at a detention center in Hawaii, where he has been charged with seven counts of sex trafficking. He plans to represent himself when his case comes to trial, as he did when he was initially found guilty of murder.

Prosecutors … say McCoy became a pimp after moving to Hawaii and that he threatened and coerced young women into prostitution. They call his arguments for dropping the charges, including vindictive prosecution, “conclusory and baseless.”

McCoy’s criminal history goes back to grade school. He appears likely to finish his life behind bars, if not for pimping then for something else.

But he can still serve as an inspiration, because chances are good that many more people are aware that he was acquitted after being on death row than that he soon returned to prison.